Wine from 200 Vines Part 2: Layout and Soil Preparation

One of the challenges over the last summer has been the hot, dry north sun killing many of the plants in our garden. Advice from Bruce at Chalmers Vineyard suggests that some new vineyards are being planted in an East-West orientation instead of the tradtional North-South to enable leaves to shade fruit during the hot, dry months of February to April, leading up to harvest.

Therefore the site was pegged out in an East-West orientation.

The goal here was to mark out the rows to enable a tractor to come in and rip. Ripping breaks the compacted soil and allows nutrients and moisture to deeply penetrate the land. In turn, the vines will be able to send roots down to find water, thereby minimising irrigation - a key goal in the process.

Row spacing is 3 metres as advised from several wineries. Overall row length for ripping is calulated on a vine spacing of 1.5 metres, plus an extra 1 metre before and after the first and last vines respectively. This means for 25 vines the length is (24 x 1.5) + (2 x 1) = 38 metres. Pegs were then put in an addtional 3 metres before and after this to avoid them being dug up by the tractor, which means peg spacing of 38 + (2x3) = 44 metres.

We are trying to avoid ripping in the areas where the fencing end-assemblies will be, to ensure they are in stable ground.

Measuring the row spacing and marking with chalk.

Using string to align the pegs.

Now that the site is pegged out the ripping can occur. This is done via a single, winged tine (known as a Yeoman's Plough) which can rip to about 500mm deep. The rig is also fitted with a spinning plough to help break up the topsoil and kill weeds. The tractor made two passes over the ground to ensure a deep rip.

Here are some photos of the ripping process:

The finished result.

Now we have prepared the soil, we move on to a standard approach for growing fruit trees. Add gypsum, adjust the pH, fertilise and sow a green manure crop.

Gypsum was bought in bulk from Dellavedova in Maryborough. 350kg for $27 is great value. This was applied evenly to all 8 rows.

A pH tester (bought from the local Home Hardware) showed the soil at three different locations to be a surpriing pH7. It was fully expected that the pH would be acidic (< 7) and that lime would be required. It was good to avoid this step.

Finally, a full trailer load of chicken manure was bought for $13.20 from Hazeldene's Chicken Farm at Bendigo. This is great value because they will fill whatever size tray you have for that price. This is also a good way to ferilise the area as the chook poo is mixed with a lot of grain husks from the chicken feed which adds an additional amount of organic matter to the soil which will rot away over time.

At the same time as the fertiliser is added, a green manure crop is also sown.

Green manure crops are a mixture of seeds from cereal and legumes that help to fix nitrogen in the soil and are also ploughed back in 6 weeks after sowing to add further organic matter.

The green manure seed mixture was bought from Bush's Produce in Bendigo. They recommended 100g per square metre. We have 320 square metres, therefore we need 3.2kg. We purchased 10kg for $25 so that we could sow additional crops if necessary.

This was a mixture of barley, wheat, oats, peas and lupins, 50:50 cereals:legumes.

Here is a photo of fertilising and sowing:

Sowing a green manure crop.

Now that the preparation works are complete we are relying on Autumn and Winter rains to wet the soil and germinate the seeds.

We expect to be ploughing the manure crop in 6 weeks, before any hard stems develop which facilitates the decomposition process.

Wine from 200 Vines Part 1: Site and Vine Selection

I was standing in the front paddock a few months ago and realised that there was a gentle, North-facing slope. Why not plant some vines?

Hiking through vines in the Asti Region of Northern Italy

This is the first of probably many posts as we embark on our home vineyard journey.

Who, at some point, has not dreamed of the idea of growing their own grapes and making wine? The idea of looking down on the green vines from your summer deck, with a glass of wine in hand, thinking of the harvest. Or tending to the bare vines in the middle of winter, preparing for the next years crop?

To begin I did a lot of reading. Probably the best document I found is this one, published in all places, Queensland! Not really known for their wine, but the practices of growing grapes and making wine are quite standardised. The document is 20 years old, but the information it contains has agreed with every conversation I have had with local wine growers.

The other fantastic source of information has been from the local winemakers: Don at Welshman's Reef, Bruce at Chalmers and the kind people at Harcourt Valley Vineyard.

Next come the key questions:

1. What varietal and clone to plant?
2. What rootstock to pair it with?
3. How many vines to order?

Firstly, we needed to determine what we want to grow and how many vines, so that we could place an order with a suitable grower this year before the end of June, so that our vines could be grafted and grown ready for planting in Spring 2019 (yes, 2019!).

The first question was one variety or two? The answer - One. Because you can make two wines from the one batch of juice. For example, a red and a rose. This gives some flexibility to the process depending on yearly yield and also simplifies the harvesting and fermenting processes.

There are so many varietals as well as root stocks, but we have chosen Sangiovese clone Matura 7 (Mat 7). This is because Sangiovese is less common in central Victoria (Shiraz being dominant) but grows well, particularly in the Heathcote area. Secondly, it is a forgiving grape, like Shiraz, but unlike Tempranillo which can be low in acidity. The Mat 7 clone was suggested as it simply makes great wine and has vibrant, dark fruit. This is a clone that is being grown both locally and in the King Valley region.

Rootstock is another key selection criteria. Our objective is to grow un-irrigated, once established, therefore a recommended rootstock is Richter 110. This sends down deep roots and therefore tolerates drier conditions. It is also of medium to high vigour, meaning that the yield should be good despite the low water use.

To determine how many vines to plant we sat down with Ron and Julia from Welshman's Reef Winery and did some back-of-the-envelope calculations:

Assuming we get 3kg fruit per vine...
200 vines would give 600kg fruit...
Assuming 60% juice yield, this gives 360 litres juice...
Which can fit in either a Barrique (225 litres) or a Barrel (360 litres), as we are aiming for barrel aged wine which makes a more professional wine than oak chips.

Therefore if we have a good year we can use most of the juice to make a red wine and the remainder
to make a rose.

So, we have now ordered 200 Sangiovese Mat 7 + R110 clones from Chalmers Nursery based in Mildura, which will be picked up by us in October 2019.

In the next post we will cover vineyard layout and preparation.

Landscape restoration: Managing erosion

Today we had the fun and privilege of another Muckleford Landcare workshop run by the very talented leadership team.

The workshop focused on how water can erode a landscape and what actions we can take to control this powerful eroding force.

Water is destructive

Our visit to a member's property showed us several problems that have been caused historically by deforestation due to gold mining as well as stock grazing and general land clearing.

The lack of plants has one significant effect, erosion, which is caused by the inability of the terrain to slow down the water as it descends the natural catchment areas.

Water travelling at speed has two flow-on effects (grown... pun) - erosion and lack of ground penetration. Both prevent the germination of plants - our ideal warrior against this foe.

The signs of erosion to look for on your property are:

• Tunnelling - water concentrates its force and erodes a hole under the ground, similar to the effect a garden hose would have at high pressure
• Capping - where the ground is completely free of vegetation and therefore highly susceptible to erosion
• Blow-out - where an earth wall has been built to contain the water, such as in a dam, but where the engineering has failed when exposed to high water volumes
• Gullys - water has descended a hill or natural depression at high speed and eroded the ground to form a deep gully

Gully erosion in the Muckleford forest

Erosion prevents natural landscape recovery

Nearly all these problems prevent the resowing or germination of any plant species, including grasses, making this a continuous issue which, if left unmanaged, will result in dirt and sediment continuing to contaminate the existing waterways which feed the local drinking water and provide irrigation for farmers.

While major erosion, such as gullys, is an obvious symptom, the problem of "capping" is wide-spread across many properties and should be drawn to the attention of any conscientious land holder.

Capped area with preventative measures

Taking a whole-of-landscape approach

The natural tendency when looking to solve the problems of erosion is to tackle the obvious issues first, such as the gullys, however, these bigger symptoms are caused by the end result of water cascading down a catchment area and gathering speed, often over capped, bare ground.

To deal with downstream erosion we need to lift our gaze higher up the catchment area and observe the landscape to identify points which cause the water to speed up.

There can also be a tendency when dealing with major erosion to bring in earth moving equipment and attempt to address the issue (or symptom) by major reworking of the area.

By dealing with symptoms we can incur significant cost, disturb the ground causing even more erosion and, fundamentally, not address the core problems.

Slowing the water

To prevent water forming powerful channels and eroding our farms we need to disperse the flow. By spreading out the flow over a wider area we can address the two major issues of speed and ground penetration.

A cost-effective, although time-consuming approach that any landholder can apply is to use local materials to help disperse the water. Branches laid across the water's course, up-stream of capped areas, can disperse the water. As this process is repeated down a hill, the cumulative effect can be greatly enhanced.

Dispersing water with branches (and a native animal)

We are not trying to dam the water as solid structures will likely be washed away in the next big downpour. Instead a loose collection of twigs and branches is sufficient to break the flow of the water and create calm areas in which plants can self-sow and begin the restoration process.

Time and patience

The approach above does rely on a fair amount of work and then time to come to fruition. The above photo shows a treatment that took four hours a day for four months. Once stick at a time!

Over time the treated areas will naturally attract sediment and plant matter, creating ideal seeding zones for self-sown plants as well as the opportunity for tube-stock planting.

We would expect to wait approximately two years before assessing the effect of the treatment prior to any type of planting intervention. Many landscapes can recover by themselves once they are given the opportunity.

Key workshop take-aways

• Take a whole-of-landscape approach
• Tackle the sickness, not the symptom
• Don't jump straight on to the big problems first
• Start your treatments higher up the catchment zone and work down
• Expensive treatments are not always the best
• Do a little every day
• Be patient

Thanks again to everyone at the workshop for their time and energy. Happy landscaping!